Obbi Oulare finally back among the goals

Forgotten man Obbi Oulare rediscovered that scoring feeling yesterday for the first time in nearly a year and a half.

The hulking Belgian striker, who is on loan at Belgium outfit Zulte-Waregem for the season, came on as a 53rd-minute substitute yesterday and drew his side level within 12 minutes against Standard Liege. However, Waregem, who had a man sent off in the first half, went on to lose the game 4-1.

“Glad to be on the scoresheet again after 15 months,” Oulare wrote on social media. “Disappointed with the result as we deserved more tonight.”

Ironically, Oulare’s last goal also came against Liege – in a 7-1 win for Club Brugge in April last year. Since then Oulare has only started one competitive game – the FA Cup win over Newcastle United – and hadn’t found the back of the net for Watford, the club’s under-23 side or his new adopted club in Belgium.

Oulare will be hoping the goal can resuscitate his career. He arrived at Watford for a reported fee of €8m having just played in the Champions League but was limited to just 50 minutes of senior football under Quique Sanchez Flores. Forty-five of those minutes came in the FA Cup third-round tie with Newcastle. He lost his place in the Belgium Under-21 team as a result.

Picture by Paul Dawson

He hasn’t managed to get many more minutes at Waregem – just 13 minutes before yesterday’s 53rd-minute introduction – but Waregem having been going great guns and are top of the league.

Elsewhere on the loan players’ front, Mario Suarez played 80 minutes in Valencia’s 2-1 defeat to Sevilla while Steven Berghuis was an unused substitute as Feyenoord scored twice in injury-time to draw 3-3 with Utrecht. That was the fifth game in the last six that Berghuis has been named on the bench by Giovanni van Bronkhorst.